Sweep targets gang's drug trade

November 17, 2010

Two years ago, prosecutors couldn't make a case against reputed gang member Jason "J Rock" Austin in the slayings of an off-duty police officer and a female companion.

But the deaths led to an intense investigation of a West Side drug operation run by the Traveling Vice Lords street gang, law enforcement sources said. Today, Chicago police and FBI agents fanned out across the city and scooped up dozens of alleged gang members.

The gang allegedly ran an around-the-clock crack and heroin market near Kedzie Avenue and Ohio Street -- known as KO -- that netted $3,000 to $6,000 a day.

Close to 100 people were charged today in federal and state courts.

At the top of Wednesday's federal indictment was Austin, who had been charged but later released in the August 2008 shooting deaths of Chicago police Detective Robert Soto, 49, and Kathryn Romberg, 45, not far from Kedzie and Ohio.

None of the allegations in Wednesday's 89-page indictment is connected to those slayings.

But, a law enforcement official said, "The murder of the police officer is what got this gang investigation rolling."

The Traveling Vice Lords, one of the city's largest gangs, is believed responsible for a number of high-profile crimes, including the 2007 home invasion robberies of two NBA players and the fatal shootings of Soto and Romberg, who was a supervisor for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

Following Wednesday's roundup, suspects were taken to locations including FBI headquarters in Chicago, and some were questioned about the 2008 slayings, sources said.

Austin had been charged within days of the killings, in part based on the description of the car that Soto was able to provide to investigators before he died.

But prosecutors dropped the case a month later due to lack of evidence and problems with statements from witnesses. Austin and six others later filed a federal lawsuit against Chicago police, claiming detectives threatened and beat witnesses to implicate Austin.

Investigators now accuse Austin of controlling drug sales at Kedzie and Ohio along with his brother, Charles "Bubba" Austin.